Past Events

The Southern Municipal Finance Society is a constituent society of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. The mission of the SMFS includes providing educational opportunities to members within and covering municipal finance in the Southern U.S. Our region encompasses 14 states.

The LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Economics, and the McCombs Department of Business, Government, and Society will continue our Environmental Economics research series for the Fall 2025 semester, featuring academics and subject matter experts in the field.

The LBJ School’s graduate programs include the Master of Public Affairs, Master of Global Policy, a new Master of National Security and an Executive program for mid-career professionals, along with more than 18 concurrent degree options in partnership with other UT Austin departments. These programs prepare students for leadership roles across government, nonprofits and the private sector.

The LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Economics, and the McCombs Department of Business, Government, and Society will continue our Environmental Economics research series for the Fall 2025 semester, featuring academics and subject matter experts in the field.

On Monday, October 27th, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Clements Center for National Security will host Dr. Joshua Geltzer for a conversation on how our government works to free Americans who are wrongfully detained overseas. Dr. Geltzer has served in various senior White House roles, including Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor, where he advised directly on U.S. efforts to secure the release of hostages and wrongful detainees abroad. In 2025, he received the James W. Foley American Hostage Freedom Award for his work to create a new federal structure for recovering Americans held abroad.

On Tuesday, October 21st, please join the University of Texas’s Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Clements Center for National Security, School of Civic Leadership, and Civitas Institute, in collaboration with the Claremont Institute, in hosting Christopher Caldwell, New York Times columnist and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, as he discusses populism and censorship in Europe.

The LBJ Business Policy Forum, hosted by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin will convene top business leaders, entrepreneurs, technologists, and policymakers in a series of high-impact dialogues. These convenings will tackle the most consequential policy challenges and opportunities facing American business today—from AI and trade policy to infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and small business resilience. Our goal is to shape a new, actionable public policy agenda that ensures the U.S. private sector remains the world’s most competitive, innovative, and influential force.

The LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Economics, and the McCombs Department of Business, Government, and Society will continue our Environmental Economics research series for the Fall 2025 semester, featuring academics and subject matter experts in the field.

On Wednesday, October 15, 2025, the Strauss-Clements Intelligence Studies Project will host a public book talk on, “Vigilance is Not Enough – A History of United States Intelligence” with author Dr. Mark Lowenthal. In this book, Mark M. Lowenthal examines the development of U.S. intelligence to explain how and why the United States went from having no intelligence service to speak of to being the world’s predominant intelligence power almost overnight, and he discusses the difficult choices involved in maintaining that dominance in a liberal democracy. The event is free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, September 30, the Clements Center for National Security and The LBJ Library will host Philip Taubman and William Taubman for a talk of their newest book, McNamara at War: A New History. Join us in the Brown Room on the 10th floor of the LBJ Library from 12:15pm-1:30pm.